TV VIEW

TV VIEW; Roseanne Is No Cousin to Archie Bunker

By Walter Goodman

Published: January 1, 1989

Class, that useful word for a combination of wealth, position, education and style, is one of the dirty nonsecrets of American life. We are flattered by Alexis de Tocqueville's observation on his first visit to America that ''the entire society seems to have melted into a middle class.'' Yet, who can fail to see the unmeltable divisions within the great middle class itself?

In 20th-century America, class is a slippery matter, with people moving not only from working class to middle class in the sort of upward mobility in which we take pride, but straddling classes as well. Today, television is the main raiser or leveler, as it instructs the many in modes of behavior once thought to be above their station. The ''life-style'' messages come through explictly and subliminally: in European-accented commercials for wine and the folksy commercials for wine cooler; in the station wagons that serve middle America's parents in sitcoms and the chauffeured limos on the evening potboilers; in the interior decoration and fashions, nicely attuned to status, that are on display day after day on the soaps. Little kids pretty much know before they start school where they fit in.

Since commercial television is in the business of reflecting class identities even as it changes them, let's check out this season's most popular new comedy show, ABC's ''Roseanne.'' The unsvelt look of Roseanne and Dan Conner, as played by Roseanne Barr and John Goodman with sloppy good spirits, bespeaks working-stiff types who have not yet got into health food. She works in a plastics plant; he is in construction. The family budget is tight but not fatal. They bowl. When Dan comes home, he reaches not for Roseanne but for a can of beer. They spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

The show, however, is lubricated by banter that bespeaks a comfortable acquaintance with and a sly superiority toward upper-class ways. Roseanne recalls that after high school, ''I was gonna go to New York and become a writer-slash-spokesmodel.'' When Dan and Roseanne go out to a fancy restaurant (they have a discount coupon), Dan asks for a wine list as though to the manor born, then orders a beer while he's waiting. When the hostess announces: ''This is Charles and he'll be your waiter,'' Roseanne instantly cracks back: ''Hello, Charles, this is Dan and I'm Roseanne, and we'll be your customers.''

No, these folks are not forelock tuggers. For one thing, they must know that despite their money problems, blue-collar Americans often make more than the white collars. Moreover, mocking the nobs is an old pleasure of the unwashed, but to do it well requires an up-to-the-minute acquaintance with upper-class pretentions. When she is called in by one of her daughter's teachers, Roseanne has no trouble dealing with the educationist jargon. The teacher thinks that 11-year-old Darlene's habit of barking in class indicates deep-seated problems and wonders how much time the family spends together. ''You mean, quality time?'' inquires Roseanne. It's very different from the days when immigrant parents would approach their children's teachers in fear and trembling and smack the kids around if they got a bad report. Roseanne can smell baloney in the classroom as well as in the restaurant.

How did Roseanne, who doesn't travel much and is rarely caught reading anything between hard covers, get so smart, so much smarter than earlier working-class representatives like ''The Honeymooners''? Why, by watching television - how else? Granted, in their television tastes, too, Americans are divided by class, with PBS catering to the Masterpiece Theater set. As one of the well-to-do nitwits in Neil Simon's new farce, ''Rumors,'' remarks, ''Cops don't watch PBS.'' Naturally, the cop who comes calling proves an exception, but it is generally understood that while all classes may tune in to Sunday afternoon football and ''60 Minutes,'' by 9 P.M., there is a split. Big Dan goes for big-time wrestling. Nonetheless, as ''Roseanne'' itself demonstrates, popular shows are often imbued with the attitudes and know-how of the well-read types who write them. The shows are usually a couple of steps ahead of the mass audience on such things as ''values.'' That's how come Roseanne, who never went to college, proves such a shrewd psychologist of her friends' neuroses and the antics of her kids.

So, here we are, a television generation after ''All in the Family,'' and the Conner household is wondrously free of bigotry. One of Roseanne's coffee-break chums is a black woman, and nobody makes a big deal about it. For all the naughty words and smart cracks, ''Roseanne'' is not aimed at stirring up the sort of commotion that ''All in the Family'' did when it began back in 1971. Set against the nice families that had occupied the small screen in the 1950's and 60's, the Bunkers were positively freakish. Archie had a bad word for everybody - and, unlike Roseanne, he meant it. There wasn't a socially redeeming thought in the man's head. Despite appearances, the Conners are throwbacks to a kinder, gentler sitcom. They represent inoffensiveness with a dirty face.

What's to offend? Children's-rights advocates can rest easy: Mom and Dad never lay a hand on the kids, except in affection. N.O.W. will not picket: Roseanne is sufficiently assertive to meet fem-lib requirements. Nobody's political or religious sensibilities are endangered: We don't know how either Dan or Roseanne voted in November; the election was never mentioned in their kitchen. And although Ms. Barr was wont to make quite a megillah in her stand-up routines about being Jewish, that, too, is an unmentionable on the tube. Half-way through the season, it's still unclear whether these folks go to church, much less which church.

Although the one-liners smack of urban smarts, they are unprovocatively domestic:

It sounds tough, but it is soft-core humor, redeemed by a hug. My hunch is that we never will learn how Roseanne and Dan vote, but that a future episode will find them trying an all-bran diet and maybe some jogging and probably giving up on both with a wisecrack and going back to beer and Cheetos. These creatures of television have to know what is in so that they can continue to be out in a reassuring way, offering viewers the satisfaction of seeing class differences mocked but never challenged. Television is a lot more democratic than life.

Photos of Roseanne Barr and John Goodman in ''Roseanne''; Jean Stapleton and Carroll O'Connor in ''All in the Family''